by Cliff Radel, The Cincinnati Enquirer

by Cliff Radel, The Cincinnati Enquirer

In a commercial for his movie, "The Monuments Men," which opens Friday, Clooney describes the art lovers who went on the world's greatest treasure hunt near the end of World War II. Sent behind enemy lines to save hundreds of thousands of priceless works from destruction by Nazis, the Monuments Men were artists, art dealers and, Clooney says, "architects." Farmer studied to be an architect at Miami University, graduating in 1935. Then the Alliance, Ohio, native went to work in Cincinnati as an interior designer before turning into an order-defying, do-the-right-thing Monuments Man.

He joined the Monuments Men â?? officially know as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives branch of the armed forces â?? just after the war ended. Farmer became the director of an art warehouse, "a collecting point," in Army lingo, that was a partially bombed-out art museum in Wiesbaden, Germany.

At the risk of being court-martialed â?? in other countries he would have just been taken out and shot â?? he led a revolt of 32 Monument Men in late 1945. They disobeyed orders and protested sending 202 German-owned paintings to be displayed in America. Over time, their protests succeeded. All 202 works were eventually returned to Germany by 1949.

The story of the 202 does not appear in the film.

"That's because my father was part of the first post-war crop of Monuments Men," explained Farmer's daughter, Margaret Farmer Planton of Chillicothe. The former mayor of that Ohio city finished her father's memoir, "The Safekeepers: A Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II," following his death in Cincinnati a month after his 86th birthday in 1997.

Thanks to the film and Robert M. Edsel's same-titled 2009 best-seller upon which Clooney's movie is based, the world is finally learning about the men and women â?? 338 art conservationists from 13 countries â?? who helped save some of the world's great treasures.

This tale is not new to Planton.

"I heard their stories at our house on Observatory Place while I was growing up in Hyde Park," she said. "My mother was his German assistant at the collecting point for the art. And then there were these wonderful boxes of photos that my dad brought home and that I enjoyed looking at."

One of her favorite photos features her father in uniform standing next to a famed 3,300-year-old limestone bust of Egypt's Queen Nefertiti.

As Allied bombers pummeled Berlin during WWII, Nazis moved the bust underground. Monuments Men found it in March 1945. The Egyptian queen met the American captain, Farmer, five months later. The war in Europe was over, and that's why the story about Nefertiti is not part of Clooney's movie.

"Robert Edsel is still writing the post-war part of the story," Planton said.

There's enough material for Clooney to do a sequel. "Base it on this," she suggested: "The war is over. We have all of this art. Now what?"

That leads to the story about the 202 paintings and a uniquely American response, based on honoring commitments and fighting for liberty.

Before 1944's D-Day invasion, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the Allies' supreme commander in Europe, issued this order: "We will be fighting our way across the continent of Europe ... in the path of our advances will be found historical monuments ... which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols."

Farmer took that order to heart. When he was ordered to crate up and ship the 202 works of German-owned art off to America, he became outraged. He felt the phrase "to the victor goes the spoils" was un-American. So he gathered 32 Monuments Men and Women. They signed the Wiesbaden Manifesto, typed by his German assistant, the woman who would become his second wife and Planton's mother, to protest the order. They knew they were taking a stance for which they could be court-martialed. They also knew they were right. History proved them so. President Harry Truman eventually ordered the 202 paintings returned to Germany.

"To this day," Planton said, "I can hear the passion and the anger in my father's voice when he told that story of the 202."

As he wrote in his memoir, Farmer, as a life-long lover of art and a true Monuments Man:

"It is my eternal wish that all the missing art treasures will be recovered and that they will be available for whole world to see."